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Hiram
looked round, amazed and stunned, his ear tingling and burning,
and
saw the gaunt apparition of his father, standing silent and
black-browed
by the bare bed-head. For a moment those two glared at one
another
mutely and defiantly.
At
last Hiram spoke: 'Wal!' he said simply.
'Wal!'
the deacon answered, with smothered wrath. 'Hiram, I am angry and
sin
not. What do you go an' take them bad books up to read for? Who
give
'em
you? Whar did you get 'em? Oh, you sinful, bad boy, whar did you
get
'em?'
And he administered another sound cuff upon Hiram's other ear.
Hiram
put his hand up to the stinging spot, and cried a minute
silently:
then
he answered as well as he was able: 'This aint a bad book: this
is
called
"The Complete Dramattic Works of William Shakespeare." Sam lent
it
to me, an' it's Sam's book, an' ther ain't no harm in it,
anyhow.'
The
deacon was plainly staggered for a moment, for even he had dimly
heard
the name of William Shakespeare; and though he had never made
any
personal acquaintance with that gentleman's works, he had always
understood
in a vague, indefinite fashion that this here Shakespeare was
a
perfectly respectable and recognised writer, whose books were
read
and
approved of even by Hopkinsite ministers edoocated at Bethabara
Seminary.
So he took the volume in his hand incredulously and looked it
through
casually for a few minutes. He glanced at a scene or two here
or
there with a critical eye, and then he flung the volume from him
quickly,
as a man might fling and crush some loathsome reptile. By this
time
Sam was half-awake, and sat up in bed to inquire sleepily, what
all
thik ther row could be about at thik time of evenin'?' The deacon
answered
by going savagely to Sam's box, and taking out, one by one, for
separate
inspection, the volumes he found there. He held up the candle
(stuck
in an empty blacking-bottle) to each volume in succession, and,
as
soon as he had finally condemned them each, he flung them down in
an
untidy pile on the bare floor of the little bedroom. Most of them
he
stood
stoically enough; but the Vicar of Wakefield was at last quite
too
much for his stifled indignation. Sitting down blankly on the bed
he
fired off his volley at poor Hiram's frightened head, with
terrible
significance.
'Hiram
Winthrop,' he said solemnly, 'you air a son of perdition. You
air
more a'most 'n I kin manage with. Satan's openin' the door for
you
on-common
wide, I kin tell you, sonny. It makes me downright scar't to
see
you in company along of sech books. Your mother'll be awful took
back
about it. I don't mind this 'ere about the Pirates of the
Caribbean
Sea,
so much; that's kinder hist'ry, that is, and mayn't do you
much
harm: but sech things as this Peter Simple, an' Wakefield, and
Pickwick's
Papers--why, I wonder the roof don't fall in on 'em an' crush
us
in the lot altogether. I'm durned ef I could have thought you'd
bin
wicked
enough to read 'em, sech on-principled literatoor. I sha'n't
chastise
you to-night, sonny; it's late, now, and we've read chapter:
but
to-morrer, Hiram, to-morrer, you shall pay for them thar books,
take
my
word for it. You shall be chastened in the manner that's
app'inted.
Ef
I was you, I should spend the rest of the evenin' in wrestlin'
for
forgiveness
for the sin you've committed.'
And
yet in the chapter the deacon had read at family worship that
evening
there was one little clause which said: 'Quench not the Spirit.'
Hiram
slept but little that night, with the vague terror of to-morrow's
whipping
overshadowing him through the night watches. But he had at
least
one comfort: Sam Churchill had got out and gathered up his books,
and
locked them carefully in his box again.
'If
the boss tries to touch they books again, I tell 'ee, Hiram,'
he
said bi-lingually (for absorbent America was already beginning to
assimilate
him), ''e'll vind 'isself a-lyin' longways on the vloor,
afore
he do know it, I promise 'ee.' Hiram heard, and was partly
comforted.
At least he would still have the books to read, somehow, at
some
time. For in his own heart, unregenerate or otherwise, he
couldn't
bring
himself to believe that there could be really anything so very
wicked
in Henry the Fourth or Peter Simple.
CHAPTER
IV. PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY.
|The
deacon's cowhide cut deep; but the thrashing didn't last long:
and
after
it was all over, Hiram wandered out aimlessly by himself, down
the
snowclad valley of Muddy Creek, and along to the wooded wilds and
cranberry
marshes near the Ontario debouchure, to forget his troubles
and
the lasting smart of the weals in watching the beasts and birds
among
the frozen lowlands. He had never been so far from home before,
but
the weather and the ice were in his favour, enabling him to get
over
an
amount of ground he wouldn't have tried to cover in the dry
summer
time.
He had his skates with him, and he skated where possible, taking
them
off to walk over the intervening land necks or drifted
snow-sheets.
The
ice was glare in many places, so that one could skate on it
gloriously;
and before he had got half-way down to Nine-Mile Bottom
he
had almost forgotten all about the deacon, and the sermon, and
the
beating,
and the threatened ten chapters of St. John (the Gospel of Love
the
deacon called it) to be learned by heart before next Lord's day,
in
expiation
of the heinous crime of having read that pernicious work the
'Vicar
of Wakefield.' It was the loveliest spot he had ever seen in all
his
poor unlovely little existence.
Close
under the cranberry trees, by a big pool where the catfish would
be
sure to live in summer, Hiram heard men's voices, whispering low
and
quiet
to one another. A great joy filled his soul. He could see at once
by
their dress and big fur caps what they were. They were trappers!
One
piece
of romance still survived in Geauga County, among the cranberry
swamps
and rush beds where the flooded creek flowed sluggishly into
the
bosom of Ontario; and on that one piece of romance he had luckily
lighted
by pure accident. Trappers! Yes, not a doubt of it! He struck
out
on his skates swiftly but noiselessly toward them, and joined the
three
men without a word as they stood taking counsel together below
their
breath on the ice-bound marshland.
'Hello,
sonny!' one of the men said in a low undertone. 'Say whar did
you
drop from? What air you comin' spyin' out a few peaceable
surveyors
for,
eh? Tell me.'
'I
didn't think you was surveyors,' Hiram answered, a little
disappointed.
'I thought you was trappers.' And at the same time he
glanced
suspiciously at the peculiar little gins that the surveyors held
in
their great gauntleted hands, for all the world like Oneida traps
for
musk-rats.
The
man noticed the glance and laughed to himself a smothered
laugh--the
laugh
of a person accustomed always to keep very quiet. 'The young un
has
spotted us, an' no mistake, boys,' he said, laughing, to the
others.
'He's
a bit too 'cute to be took in with the surveyor gammon. What do
you
call this 'ere, sonny?'
'I
calc'late that's somewhar near a mink trap,' Hiram answered,
breathless
with delight.
'Wal,
it _is_ a mink trap,' the trapper said slowly, looking deep into
the
boy's truthful eyes. 'Now, who sent you down here to track us out
and
peach upon us; eh, Bob?'
'Nobody
sent me,' Hiram replied, with his blue eyes looking deep back
into
the trapper's keen restless grey pair. 'I kem out all o' my own
accord,
'cos father gave me a lickin' this mornin', an' I've kem out
jest
to get away for a bit alone somewhar.'
'Who's
your father?' asked the man still suspiciously.
'Deacon
Winthrop, down to Muddy Creek Deepo.'
'Deacon
Winthrop! Oh, I know him, ruther. A tall, skinny, dried-up kind
of
fellow, ain't he, who looks as if most of his milk was turned
sour,
an' the Hopkinsite Confession was a settin' orful heavy on his
digestion?'
Hiram
nodded several times successively, in acknowledgment of the
general
accuracy of this brief description. 'That's him, you bet,' he
answered
with unfilial promptitude. 'I guess you've seed him somwhar,
for
that's him as like as a portrait. Look here, say, I'll draw him
for
you.'
And the boy, taking his pencil from his pocket, drew as quickly
as
he was able on a scrap of birch-bark a humorous caricature of his
respected
parent, as he appeared in the very act of offering an unctuous
exhortation
to the Hopkinsite assembly at Muddy Creek meeting-house.
It
was very wrong and wicked, of course--a clear breach of the Fifth
Commandment--but
the deacon hadn't done much on his own account to merit
honour
or love at the hands of Hiram Winthrop.
The
man took the rough sketch and laughed at it inwardly, with a
suppressed
chuckle. There was no denying, he saw, that it was the
perfect
moral of that thar freezed-up old customer down to the Deepo. He
handed
it with a smile to his two companions. They both recognised the
likeness
and the little additions which gave it point, and one of them,
a
Canadian as Hiram conjectured (for he spoke with a dreadful
English
accent--so
stuck-up), said in the same soft undertone: 'Do you know
where
any mink live anywhere hereabouts?'
'A
little higher up stream,' Hiram answered, overjoyed, 'I know
every
spot
whar ther's any mink stirrin' for five miles round, anyhow.'
The
Canadian turned to the others.
'Boys,'
he said, 'you can trust the youngster. He won't peach on us.
He's
game, you may be sure. Now, youngster, we're trappers, as you
guessed
correctly. But you see, farmers don't love trappers, because
they
go trespassing, and overrunning the fields: and so we don't want
you
to say a word about us to this father of yours. Do you
understand?'
Hiram
nodded.
'You
promise not to tell him or anybody?'
'Yes,
I promise.'
'Well,
then, if you like, you can come with us. We're going to set our
traps
now. You don't seem a bad sort of little chap, and you can see
the
fun
out if you've a mind to.'
Hiram's
heart bounded with excitement. What a magnificent prospect! He
promised
to show the trappers every spot he knew about the place where
any
fur-bearing animal, from ermine to musk-rat, was likely to be
found.
In
ten minutes, all four were started off upon their skates once
more,
striking
up the river in the direction of the deacon's, and setting
traps
by Hiram's advice as they went along, at every likely run or
corner.
'You
drew that picture real well,' the Canadian said, as they skated
side
by side: 'I could see it was the old man at a glance.'
Hiram's
face shone with pleasure at this sincere compliment to his
artistic
merit. 'I could hev done it a long sight better,' he said
simply,
'ef my hands hadn't been numbed a bit with the cold, so's I
could
hardly hold the pencil.'
It
was a grand day, that day with the trappers--the gipsies of
half-settled
America; the grandest day Hiram had ever spent in his
whole
lifetime. How many musk-rats' burrows he pointed out to his new
acquaintance
along the bank of the creek; how many spots where the
mink,
that strange water-haunting weasel, lurks unseen among the frozen
sedges!
Here and there, too, he showed them the points where he had
noticed
the faint track of the ermine on the lightly fallen snow, and
where
they might place their traps across the path worn by the 'coons
on
their way to and from the Indian corn patch. It was cruel work, to
be
sure,
setting those murderous snapping iron jaws, and perhaps if Hiram
had
thought more about the beasts themselves (whom after all he loved
in
his
heart) he wouldn't have been so ready to aid their natural
enemies
in
thus catching and exterminating them: but what boy is free from
the
aboriginal
love of hunting something? Certainly not Hiram Winthrop, at
least,
to whom this one glimpse of a delightful wandering life among
the
woods and marshes--a life that wasn't all made up of bare fields
and
fall wheat and snake fences and cross-ploughing--seemed like a
stray
snatch
of that impossible paradise he had read about in 'Peter Simple'
and
the 'Buccaneers of the Caribbean Sea.'
'Say,
Bob,' the Canadian muttered to him as they were half-way through
their
work (in Northern New York every boy unknown is _ex officio_
addressed
as Bob), 'we shall be back in these diggings in the spring
again,
looking after the summer furs, you see. Now, don't you go and
tell
any other trappers about these places we've set, because trappers
gener'ly
(present company always excepted) is a pretty dishonest lot,
and
they'll poach on other trappers' grounds and even steal their
furs
and
traps as soon as look at 'em. You stand by us and we'll stand by
you,
and take care you don't suffer by it.'
'When'll
you come?' Hiram asked in the thrilling delight of
anticipation.
'When
the first spring days are on,' the Canadian answered. 'I'll tell
you
the best sign: it's no use going by days o' the month--we don't
remember
'em mostly;--but it'll be about the time when the skunk cabbage
begins
to flower.'
Hiram
made a note of the date mentally, and treasured it up in safety
on
the
lasting tablets of his memory.
At
about one o'clock the trappers sat down upon the frozen bank and
ate
their
dinner. It would have been cold work to men less actively
engaged;
but
skating and trapping warms your blood well. 'Got any grub?' one
of
the
men asked Hiram, still softly. Your trapper seems almost to have
lost
the power of speaking above a whisper, and he moves stealthily
as
if he thought a spectral farmer was always dogging his steps
close
behind
him.
'No,
I ain't,' Hiram answered.
'Then,
thunder, pitch into the basket,' his new friend said
encouragingly.
Hiram
obeyed, and made an excellent lunch off cold hare and lake
ship-biscuit.
'Are
you through?' the men asked at last.
'Yes,'
Hiram replied.
'Then
come along and see the
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